The Only 3 Leg Exercises Mountain Bikers Need
Build strength for mountain biking! These leg exercises will improve your pedal power. A simple MTB workout.
You want legs of steel that don’t scream every time the trail tilts upward? Good news—your quest for quads, glutes, and calves worthy of a mountain biking legend starts here.
Whether you’re new to the sport or you’ve been shredding singletrack for years, your lower body is your engine. But before you slap on weights and start squatting like your life depends on it, there’s some crucial groundwork to do.
Welcome to the ultimate leg-strengthening routine designed specifically for mountain bikers—by people who actually ride bikes and feel your pain.
Table of Contents
- Why Mobility Comes First
- Essential Mobility Drills
- Activate Those Forgotten Glutes
- Leg Strength Exercises for Trail Domination
- Bulgarian Split Squats
- Decline Pistol Squats
- Single Leg Wall Sits
- Calf Raises With a Twist
Why Mobility Comes First
Before you go beast mode on your quads, your joints need some attention. That means hip and ankle mobility.
You’re aiming for 110 degrees of hip flexion without your hip joint complaining. The same goes for your ankles—if you can’t get your knee over your toes comfortably, you’re not spinning efficiently, and worse, you might be setting yourself up for pain (and another visit to your physical therapist).
Key mobility checks for effective strength training for mountain biking:
- Pull your knee up past 90 degrees without pain = good
- Ankle bends forward without pinching = also good
If not, don’t skip the next section.
Essential Mobility Drills
Ankle Mobilization With a Resistance Band
- Loop a thick band under those two ankle bones.
- Attach the other end to something solid (squat rack or heavy furniture) to enhance your strength training.
- Drop down into a lunge position and move forward, backward, and side-to-side.
- Feel the stretch. No pinching allowed.
- Do it for 1–2 minutes.
Hip Mobilization Drill
- Lie on your back and loop the band close to your hip joint.
- Brace yourself and pull your knee toward your chest.
- Explore different angles—hip joints love variety.
- Hold for 1–2 minutes.
Now your joints are open for business.
Activate Those Forgotten Glutes
Let’s talk about the glute medius—the unsung hero of mountain biking. If you’ve never heard of it, your knees probably have. Weak glutes equal unstable knees and poor power transfer when cycling or mountain biking.
Lateral Band Walks
- Wrap a mini band around your ankles.
- Step side-to-side slowly. Control is key.
- 12–15 steps in each direction will help enhance your strength training for mountain biking.
- Do 2–3 sets and feel the burn.
Pro tip: Drive your pushing foot into the ground and add a little external rotation for max glute engagement during your leg exercises. No burn means no gain.
Leg Strength Exercises for Trail Domination
Now that your body moves like it should, it’s time to build muscle that translates to real trail performance on your mountain bike.
Bulgarian Split Squats
What you’ll need: A bench and some mental toughness.
- Sit on a bench and extend one leg to find your stance.
- Plant your back foot on the bench.
- Grab a weight (optional, but effective).
- Lower yourself slowly for four seconds, aiming for 110 degrees of hip flexion to improve your pedal efficiency.
- Do 3 sets of 10–12 reps.
Bonus challenge: Try it with a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell to increase the intensity.
Decline Pistol Squats
What you’ll need: A decline board or elevated surface.
- Stand on one leg with a slight hip hinge.
- Lower yourself slowly (four-second descent).
- Start with 6–8 reps. Build up to 10–12.
- Perform 2–3 sets of strength training to enhance your cycling performance.
This builds quad strength, ankle stability, and balance—all in one brutal move.
Wall Sit Burnout
Find a wall. Get into a pistol squat variation or hold a deep squat position.
- Abs engaged, thighs parallel.
- Hold for 1 minute.
- Push to 2 minutes if you’re feeling ambitious.
Excellent way to finish a leg workout and build muscular endurance.
Calf Raises With a Twist
Time to give your calves some love. These muscles are crucial for power and bike control.
What you’ll need: A step and a backpack or weighted vest (optional).
- Toes forward: 20 reps
- Toes in: 20 reps
- Toes out: 20 reps
Focus on a full stretch at the bottom and a controlled, explosive lift up. This hits both the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles across multiple planes of motion.
Wrapping It Up
This isn’t just another leg day—it’s a program designed to help mountain bikers ride harder, longer, and with fewer injuries. You’ll improve power, endurance, joint function, and trail performance.
Here’s the formula:
Mobilize. Activate. Strengthen. Dominate your mountain bike trails.
Now go train like your next ride depends on it—because it does.
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of GHT. In this video we’re going to talk about leg strengthening that is important for mountain biking. So Jose, let’s get started. First, we need to strengthen your quads, your glutes, and your calves. But you need that mobility first. So hip mobility and ankle mobility. You need 110 degrees of hip flexion without feeling a jam in your hip.
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And what else? Yeah, when it comes to your ankle, because you’re spinning around on that pedal, you got to make sure that you get your knee over your toes. But when we’re assessing mobility, you need to listen to your body. So as Jose was demonstrating, if you have hip flexion that is above 90 degrees, and you pull your leg up, you need to make sure that you don’t have any pain in the front of your hip. That indicates that perhaps there’s some joint tightness.
And then with the ankle… Yeah, so as soon as I did that, my ankle was kind of cranky. So your ankle, you need to be able to bend forward like that because you’re going to be seated on the bike going a couple different directions. And I’m feeling a little bit of a pinch. So you know what? Let’s just get started. Let’s show these people how to mobe.
Yeah. So in order to mobilize, all you need is basically a nice thick band like so, and attach it to a squat rack, or something at least that’s stable. You want to find these two little bones right here. Make sure the band is below that. And you put some nice tension on there. Drop down, and you’re mobbing. Three directions all over the place. Make sure that feels nice and clean there. Boom.
Exactly. And then Jose, when you’re typically doing this, how long are you usually doing it?
Do it for about a minute or so. You can go for two minutes if you want, but just know and listen to your body. If it feels better after a minute, you’re pretty much good.
Exactly. Yeah. Typically for me, I know I have to hang in there for at least two minutes just because I’m just playing stuff.
Now, when it comes to the hip mobility, it’s very similar. In this case, you want to lay down on your back, place that band as close as possible to your hip joint. Make sure you brace yourself and then pull up towards your chest, just to the point where you may feel a little bit of the symptoms, but you want to go in multiple planes or multiple directions. And you continue this for about one to two minutes.
Sweet. All right. Now that you’ve got your game tight with your mobility, you get yourself a little band, got to work on your lateral hip game. This is one of the most, the one muscle that never really gets trained here is your glute med. Okay. So gluteus medius right here. Just take a band, toss that sucker, right at the ankles. You want to make sure you go slow. So you’re just going to kind of step here to the side, slowly bring that in.
How many?
Like 12 to 15 one way, 12 to 15 the other way. If you really want to cook your muscles, do a couple of sets that way. Now you’re ready to start your training. Easy peasy.
Yeah. So don’t skip out on working your gluteal muscles because it’s kind of like job security for physical therapists.
Yeah. Because most of us don’t do it in the gym.
All the time. Yeah. So don’t give that physical therapist, you know, another visit, of course.
Now when doing that exercise, one little tip that I’ve learned, Jose, just through personal experimenting is that I like to, as I push off on that one foot, I like to really try to drive that into the floor because that lateral motion and a little bit of external rotation really engages my gluteus medius muscle.
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. If it’s not burning, why am I doing it?
So now our hips are awake. Hopefully you have restored mobility and next step, let’s get to it.
So the first exercise is the Bulgarian split squat.
I love the Bulgarian. Oh, it hurts, hurts in a good way.
Yeah. Yes. It’s good. So Bulgarian split squat, there are so many ways of getting in the right position, but one way you could sit on your bench or wear whatever surface, putting your one foot out, extended at the knee, and then stand up and place your back foot onto that surface. Now you’re in the position that are ready to rock and roll and you can use a weight and you want to descend. And we’re trying to mimic those motions in mountain biking. So about 110 degrees hip flexion.
And I like to add a little sauce to my exercises. Friggin’ 70 pounds.
Oh yeah. 70 pounds, no problem. Four second descent because I love eccentrics. Down I go. Oh yeah. And back up. One’s not enough. Gotta slowly go down.
Don’t challenge Steve with workouts.
And back up. I love this. I have to say they’re probably one of my favorite exercises.
Well, after you’re done about three sets of 10, 12 range, of course, focus on that eccentrics. That way you’re lowering the muscle. What’s next?
Next, you got to get those quads. Super important. Honestly, I’m trying to up my quad game. You have a decline board here. Okay. It’s a pistol squat. For a pistol squat, you just want to get over here. Nice and careful. Does take a little bit of balance, but you’ve got this.
Then you’re going to go into a bit of a hip hinge. You want to slowly descend about four seconds or so. And you want to build yourself up six to eight reps to begin with. But if you can crank out 10 to 12 eventually, a couple of sets of that, you’re good to go.
So prop one foot down here. Up. You go down in a slice controlled manner. You can go down if you want. Come right back up with power and slow and controlled. Check it out. You can even smile if you’re doing this. Oh, it feels so good. It hurts, hurts. There you go. Boom.
And you can add some weight if you want to. But I personally like to go with body weight because with single leg, this is pretty, pretty gnarly. Like that.
Oh, yeah. That’s an awesome exercise. You’re getting a little bit of that stability or basically balance. You’re hitting those regular, those motions that you’re simulating mountain biking. You can be a go-getter and be like Jose and pretty much sit on your foot. Or you can go down where your hip is about, again, 110 degrees.
And then next, after we do that, we’re going to get a burner in. So I’ll demonstrate the next one.
Oh, man.
All you need for this exercise is a good old fashioned wall. Now, just for demonstration purposes, I will stand here in front so you can see what I’m up to. But basically, if the wall is behind me, I want to get in that pistol squat. Go on down. And I’ll scoot forward a little bit more. Oh, and you want to hang out there. Abs are tight.
Hey, if you can go down that hip flexion of about 110 degrees, awesome. Hang out here for about a minute. If you’re a go-getter, I mean, you could go for two minutes. I mean, I think I can have dinner here. You know, just hang out.
You’re just showing off. That’s a great way to finish it off. You know, good asymmetry. And then after you’re done with that, what’s next, Jose?
Well, I threw on Steve’s cool rucksack over here. How much we got in here? Like 50 pounds or something like that?
Something like that. Want to work the calves. So you can get something like this. Could be a step. But we’re going to do some heel raises. And not just regular heel raises. We’re just going to go up and down. You want to get a nice deep stretch at the bottom. And then you want to kind of explode up with power.
The gastroc, those muscles are explosive. The soleus underneath there is a little bit more for endurance. But you want to kind of go up and slowly, slowly go down. I go about 20 reps or so. Toes pointing forward. Then I go ahead and do toes in. About 20 reps of that. Like that. And then once I’ve had enough of that, go ahead and punish my muscles a little bit more and do toes out.
So you’re getting a nice triplanar range of motion there, which is going to really, really benefit you instead of the typical, just up and down. You want to be nice and strong for sure.
Exactly. Yeah. And when doing this exercise, you know, one thing, we kind of have a little bit of a rig here as to, you know, what we’re stepping on, but you could step off the edge of a step. But the key is, is just making sure that when you descend, you do feel that stretch.
Oh yeah.
Yeah. Cause you definitely, yeah, you want to get that nice stretch in there just to help with that muscle growth.
Exactly. So with that, that’s quick routine that you can incorporate into your mountain biking strengthening. So that way you can get out there, get your venture in and just be prepared. You can climb those hills better, have a little more fun with it.
All right, y’all stay gritty. You know the drill. That’s your thing.
